ClearOS: another ebox platform alternative

ClearOS is a powerful network and gateway server designed for small organizations and distributed environments.  Though ClearOS comes with an extensive list of features  and integrated services, the solution is easy to configure thanks to the intuitive web-based interface.

ClearOS is reincarnation of Clarkconnect that based on Centos 5.2, same as SMEServer. Centos itself is based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

So if you like Red Hat you can use ClearOS or SMEServer, or RHEL itself ofcourse :) But for Ubuntu minded ebox still best choice.

Ebox 2.0

eBox Platform Development Team announced today that the eBox Platform 2.0 release will be delayed until September 1st. The decision was taken last Friday evening, after studying the different options and concluding that in order to release more stable version of the product, more time was needed for testing and improvements.

The first installer CD of eBox Platform 1.5 (beta version of eBox Platform 2.0) was released for testing and feedback on the 26th of July. As mentioned in the announcement, the development of eBox Platform 2.0 has now finished and the development team is now fully centered on testing and bugfixing the software. Moreover, during this stabilization period we are also dedicating time for optimizing the software to improve the performance and reduce the installation time. The aim of dedicating all August for these purposes is to guarantee that the next major release of eBox Platform will be the most stable release ever.

What's coming in 2.0

• New base: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS
• New graphical installer
• Easy disaster recovery
• Thin Clients server
• FTP server
• Webserver with HTTPS support
• Improved software management
• Autoconfiguration wizards

SME Server New Release

The SME Server development team is pleased to announce the release of SME Server 7.5.1 This is a patch release for SME 7.5 to resolve problems seen by some VPN users, and other minor fixes. The release should be obtained from your closest mirror, see http://wiki.contribs.org/SME_Server:Download

SME Server Version 8 will be the next major version of SME Server, and will involve upgrading the base to CentOS 5. SME Server 8.0beta5 is based on CentOS 5.4. A copy of the latest CD image can be downloaded here.
SME Server is the leading Linux distribution for small and medium enterprises.

ebox platform : SMEServer alternative?

"eBox Platform is a unified network server that offers easy and efficient computer network administration for SMBs. It can act as a Gateway, an Infrastructure Manager, a Unified Threat Manager, an Office Server, a Unified Communication Server or a combination of them. These functionalities are tightly integrated, automating most tasks, avoiding mistakes and saving time for system administrators."

I'm looking for SMEServer alternative that based on Ubuntu. Ebox-platform look promise, it's based on Ubuntu 8.04 LTS. Ebox is a web framework used to manager server application configuration.Ebox writen using perl.

Windows Server vs Linux Server

Microsoft compare RedHat Linux with Windows Server 2008

Do you believe it?

Enable Vim syntax highlighting on Ubuntu 8.04

Ubuntu 8.04 by default include vim-tiny only that did not support syntax highlighting, so we need install "vim".

sudo apt-get install vim

Open file /etc/vim/vimrc and uncomment line

syntax on

or create file .vimrc on our home directory.

 echo 'syntax on' >> ~/.vimrc 

Install GNOME on SME Server 7.4

GNOME by default is not included on SME Server 7.4. Install GNOME is easy.
Enable group on base and updates repository.

# db yum_repositories setprop base EnableGroups yes
# db yum_repositories setprop updates EnableGroups yes

Update yum configuration

# expand-template /etc/yum.smerepos.d/sme-base.repo

Then install GNOME ( repo base was not enabled by default so we manually enable )

# yum -y --enablerepo=base groupinstall gnome-desktop

Add symbolic links for X Font Server

# ln -s /etc/init.d/xfs /etc/rc7.d/S38xfs

Add X Font Server service to database

# config set xfs service status enabled

GNOME Display Manager(gdm) will complaint about profile.Open file /etc/profile.d/e-smith-lib_compspec.sh and replace dash (-) with underscore (_) on

_esmith_signal-event ()
_esmith_expand-template ()

Add custom template for inittab

# mkdir -p /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/inittab
echo 'x:7:respawn:/etc/X11/prefdm -nodaemon' > /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/inittab/99xwindows

Update inittab

# expand-template /etc/inittab

Set default desktop to GNOME

# echo 'DESKTOP=GNOME' > /etc/sysconfig/desktop
# echo 'DISPLAYMANAGER=GNOME' >> /etc/sysconfig/desktop

Download and install modified redhat graphical boot package from here

# wget http://besme.googlecode.com/files/rhgb-0.14.1-10.el4.sme.i386.rpm
# yum localinstall rhgb-0.14.1-10.el4.sme.i386.rpm

Modify file /etc/grub.conf, add option quiet and rhgb

default=1
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/smeserver.xpm.gz
foreground 000000
background 4E95D3
hiddenmenu
title SME Server (2.6.9-78.0.8.ELsmp)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.9-78.0.8.ELsmp ro root=/dev/main/root quiet rhgb
initrd /initrd-2.6.9-78.0.8.ELsmp.img
title SME Server-up (2.6.9-78.0.8.EL)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.9-78.0.8.EL ro root=/dev/main/root quiet rhgb
initrd /initrd-2.6.9-78.0.8.EL.img

Reboot system

# signal-event reboot